Believe it or not you can build a private blog network that is a complete useless piece of shit. You spend countless hours between domain prospecting to actually hosting and setting up your sites. But what if after all that hard work you go to drop some links and things just don’t move the way you want?
There are so many factors now days trying to stop you from PBN linking an SEO needs to be much more aware than the old days. We will be covering the more bone headed stuff that people do in this article.
Cloudflare – This on gave me a chuckle for a while, use cloud flare IPs to setup your PBN domains. Yeah if you’re a fucking jackass. I repeat, do NOT do this, come on pay for some hosting people.
Robots.txt footprints – Be careful what you use in your robots file, in fact you don’t even need to block bots via robots.txt at all. But as an example of the crazy shit people do, check out some of these search queries for the common backlink bots useragents in robots.txt, you might even find some PBN domains.
Example: inurl:robots.txt “MJ12bot” “user-agent”
Unnecessary plugins – If there is a plugin that you don’t need, don’t use that shit. Like a bot blocking plugin for example, why use that when you can just modify your htaccess file? It’s redundant and can leave you exposed. I recommend going with the most minimal setup possible, and do vary it up slightly if you can. For example, you can use a few different redirection plugins instead of the same exact one each time. Also why not use html sites sometime?
Lack of hosting diversity – Back to the cloudflare nonsense. There are a lot of different ideas on how to actually host your PBN, but I’ll make it simple for you. You need different unique IPs and they should be as diverse as possible. So your Hostgator reseller breaking off 5x IPs all in order like:
174.xxx.xxx.92
174.xxx.xxx.93
174.xxx.xxx.94
etc.
Isn’t going to work very well. Think your link profile might look a little strange like that? Use cheap shared hosting, there’s an endless supply of it out there, like endless. Just use your expert Googling skills and find the best deals, coupons, email support, do whatever it takes. Bottom line shared hosting doesn’t cost shit for companies and your PBN sites hardly take up any space and use very little bandwidth. So just put in the hustle and you can find all kinds of decent hosting for about $30 a year. That’s the price I usually shoot for on average.
Not blocking link checkers properly – This is by no means a difficult thing you just need to have your htaccess file formatted properly and need a current list of all the backlink bots. But if you don’t know what you’re doing it’s really easy to botch this and let your competitors snoop all your links.
No authority links – If you aren’t dropping healthy amounts of authority links on your PBN then 2012 called, they want their PBN back. Don’t think of it like you’re sharing a chunk of your precious link juice, it’s important to camouflage your links and help make Google think your site is related to the authority sites. Don’t use your direct competitors of course and don’t just use wikipedia a bunch, use all the big sites.
Duplicate content – How are you generating your PBN content? Most people are probably royally screwing this up, just like anything else you need unique content for your PBN. At the very minimum you need a sentence or two with your link in it, be smart about it.
Not faking whois – Another one of those important pain in the ass details when it comes to building a PBN, whois information. How do you handle this? Use privacy on some of them? All? None? Well, I’ll tell you what to do, put fake info on them. This gives you the additional hoop to jump through of email verification but nobody said this was going to be easy.
SOA Email footprint – If you’re using any sort of reseller hosting setup than you best be changing the SOA email on each account DNS zone. Otherwise you’ll be able to google your email in quotes and find them domains.
Not checking archive.org for spam – If you’re not already doing this then you might need to go fix yourself a drink. It’s absolutely crazy how many domains have been previously picked up and spammed with now days. News flash, building a PBN isn’t exactly a new tactic. So use what is arguably one of the best free tools available for SEOs, archive.org. Make sure you thoroughly click around the history to determine if someone else snagged the domain and spammed with it. It’s not set in stone of course but I live by this rule, if there was any sort of spam previously on the domain I don’t touch it, just too risky. I can’t be going through all the trouble and expense to set it up, then put a link on it and be scratching my head wondering if the domain is tainted.
Domains won’t index cuz they spam – Occasionally I might even snag a bad egg, it’s rare but if the domain won’t index then something is wrong (ey why not try pointing a link at your competitor, fuck it).
Underestimated the Importance of Relevance – As Google gets better and better at spotting the difference between “relevant” domains and a generic PBN domains you should also be getting better at serving Google what they want. Even a small handful of relevant domains can tip the scales and get the results you’re after.
Being a dumbass – It shouldn’t go without saying, but being a dumbass can lead to major PBN failures. I could almost go on all day pointing out mistakes I’ve seen over the days. Then for near all of those mistakes I’ve seen a case of a site ranking breaking those rules. Hopefully that doesn’t blow your mind ;-)
So take my advice for what it is, don’t get caught up in the bullshit and execute. That is for my brothers and sisters who actually do things they read in blog posts!
Mr. King, you’re hilarious. Coming to the point, Can you put more details upon checking archive folders for spam? I am someone who is not very fluent with coding or seo language, and I was wondering if you could help me. TIA.
Not much more to it but just manually clicking around a bunch. If you see a big lapse in caches then I click around a lot near the beginning and end to see if someone snagged it.
Always straight to the point! Glad to see you’re updating again. And currently on a roll! Thank you! Just wanna ask regarding htaccess files. Is there a universal setting or does it depend on the PBN you have?
It’s universal I guess, weird way to put it. The line of code for blocking a bot is the same each time, yes.
Can you please provide that .htaccess code? Thanks in advance Jacob.
Keep sharing resouceful content like this :)
Nah sorry, I only share that file with my forum members. It’s nothing special tho, just a comprehensive list of all the backlink bots about there. You can find the same ones by Googling.
You have forum?!
Fuck yea I do. http://www.blackhatstacks.com/
Jacob only wants your cash! Here’s an example:
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*rogerbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*exabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*mj12bot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*dotbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*gigabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*ahrefsbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*sitebot.* bad_bot
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot
Fuck, this WP doesn’t like my tags.
Yeah totally I just want your cash, just use this guys incomplete code for free. Sounds like a solid plan.
Hey Jacob, I don’t understand why you should not use ClouldFlare for hosting? Why It’s give you unique ips?
Cuz it’s a terrible idea and some terrible SEO blogs have suggested it.
Hi Jacob,
What’s about this plugin “Link Privacy” is it worth to use it ?
Doubt it.
hey Jacob, Nice post. What about having real traffic on PBNs? Hearing these days that real traffic and social shares/likes on pbns can do magic. Should we focus long tail keywords on pbns so we can get traffic? or it’s just a waste of time?
Well depending on how you’re approaching that I think it’s a great strategy for the right niche and something you want to truly lock down. If I’m following correctly you’re thinking of building some decent looking properties that actually get traffic as well vs purely for the link. That’s the best route imo, just a lot more work and challenging in tougher niches. But some less commercial stuff you can really build some legit stuff that will stand the test of time if you’re willing to put in the effort.
Hilarious! I try not to be a big dumbass as much as I can. I am however lacking on the SOA record. You said that you just go into the DNS Zone on Cpanel to change this for each domain?
This is only if you’re using some sort of reseller or SEO hosting with WHM. If you’re using shared hosting you don’t need to worry about it.
Love your candor. As usual all your info is very viable. Need to take a good look at some properties and see if they match up to your suggestions.
Many thanks
Hey thanks for sharing this information. What do you think of using web2.0 for pbn. Do they work??
They can help if you build some decent links to them and establish them some, but not something I waste time on personally anymore. I’d rather just setup an actual domain.
Jabob mate you are awesome.
Hi Jacob
What about social signals for Pbn ? How you build them once you setup a BPN ? Do use any recommended Service? What do you think of the Network Empire Social Plugin?
To make the PBN get stronger, do you build any links to it ?
How you theme the PBN ?
Lately ranking slow down before you see any move in serps ? Is there any suggestion ?
Thanks Jacob
Social signals for PBN, that’s a good one.
Nice post Mr King.
Have a question on blocking bots via HT Access file. Now instead if blocking our PBN shouldn’t we just block bots from our business site so that our competition couldn’t try yo seek our backlinks from sites like Majestic, Ahref etc?
I mean I am not interested to check the DA/PA or TF/CF of my money sites as they won’t bring any money. They are just some metrics bought by some shinny ass marketers.
What do suggest Mr King
How about also not making your PBNs super obvious as being PBNs?
There’s no law out there that says the only WordPress theme you can use is whatever the default one is … maybe making a site look a bit more legit might also help some people who are struggling with setting up their PBNs.
+1 for relevance as well.
Might be worth mentioning, but if you’re going to fake whois details – it’s worth forward all emails to one central email account to avoid something like this happening:
http://ohgm.co.uk/icann-drop-your-domain/
The things us SEO’s can do to get ahead!
100% you need access to the email, without a doubt.
I registered 3 domain name with FXdomains generating 3 different info for every domain name using fakenamegenerator but fxdomains catched this and blocked me and told they had a duty to protect me from online predators.
They are asking me for my ID if I want to unlock that domain. Has anyone experienced this, does anyone know how to resolve this.
You gotta make sure you can verify any emails they send and your account is in good standing. Never used this reg before tho.
I’ve seen loads of working networks with all the same whois.. I don’t think this is algo detected (manual review with fuck u) . My small Cloud Flare PBN dose the job too.
Same, I have too. Doesn’t mean it’s the ideal way to setup.
As I am trying to build a PBN, I thought to ask a question. I have heard that wordpress may reveal your real IP address, in my posts I have disabled trackbacks and comments. But, in the setting section there is something like this “http://rpc.pingomatic.com/”, should I disable this or not?
Oh man, if you’re hung up on that this might not be the best idea.
Which plugins (WordPress) do I need to make a paid PBN?
What I want is that people buy credits and spent their credits on publishing their post.
Gonna need some custom shit for that